War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, war
in Lebanon. The rest of the middle east is teetering on a knife edge with
Syria threatening to join the conflict and Iran's Uranium enrichment continuing.

So what is the President of the United
States doing in an attempt to ease this tension? What decisive action
is he taking today? Who is he going to meet and have talks with in order
to diffuse the danger of a possible third world war?

"American Idol" will reach
the pinnacle of political validation today when President Bush welcomes
this year's winner, Taylor Hicks, and the show's nine runners-up to the
White House.

Bush could use a ratings boost —
for months, polls have consistently shown fewer than four in 10 Americans
approve of his job performance.

"It can be tricky, when the
Middle East is falling apart, to be spending time with the winner of 'American
Idol,' " said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University
in Rhode Island. "There's the risk that people will ask, 'Doesn't
this guy have something better to do? Shouldn't he be solving foreign
crises?' "

Yes, indeed.

This comes on the heels of the news
that Tony
Blair is on tour in California hob knobbing with Arnold Schwarzenngger
and doing private business deals with Rupert Murdoch.